OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 


•  EXUBRIS  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


JOHN  HENRY  NASH  LIBRARY 

<8>  SAN  FRANCISCO 

PRESENTED  TO  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


ROBERT  GORDON  SPRQUL,  PRESIDENT. 
<$>    BY 


MR.AND  MRs.MILTON  S  .  RAV 
CECILY,  VIRGINIA  ANDROSALYN  RAY 


RAY  OIL  BURNER  COMPANY 


o 


LYMPUS  AND 
FUJI    YAMA 


A  ST  U  DY  IN  TR  A  N  S- 
CENDENTAL  HISTORY 
By  LAYTON  CRIPPEN 


GRANNIS     PRESS 


NEW  YORK 
MCMV 


Copyright,  1905 
BY  LAYTON  CRIPPEN 


Before  man  parted  for  this  earthly  strand. 
While  yet  upon  the  verge  of  heaven  he  stood, 

God  put  a  heap  of  letters  in  his  hand. 
And  bade  him  make  with  them  what  word  he  could. 

And  man  has  turn'd  them  many  times;  made  Greece, 
Rome,  England,  France;  —  yes,  nor  in  vain  essay' d 

Way  after  way,  changes  that  never  cease! 
The  letters  have  combined,  something  was  made. 

But  ah!  an  inextinguishable  sense 

Haunts  him  that  he  has  not  made  what  he  should; 
That  he  has  still,  though  old,  to  recommence, 

Since  he  has  not  yet  found  the  word  God  would. 

And  empire  after  empire,  at  their  height 

Of  sway,  have  felt  this  boding  sense  come  on; 

Have  felt  their  huge  frames  not  constructed  right, 
And  droop' d,  and  slowly  died  upon  their  throne. 

One  day,  thou  say'st,  there  will  at  last  appear 

The  word,  the  order,  which  God  meant  should  be. 

Ah!  we  shall  know  THAT  well  when  it  comes  near; 
The  band  will  quit  man's  heart,  he  will  breathe  free. 

—  Matthew  Arnold. 


world  is  ready  for  a  new  Civilization. 
Since  the  dawn  of  history,  since  the  day 
when  the  wise  King  told  his  people  to 
live  by  Law,  it  has  learned  and  suf- 
fered much.  It  has  lived  for  pleasure,  the  lust 
of  the  eye  and  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  and  has  grown 
satiated.  In  a  fever  of  disgust  it  has  mortified 
the  body  that  the  soul  might  be  redeemed,  and 
has  become  sick  of  renunciation.  Then  it  has 
turned  to  pleasure  again,  pleasure  less  innocent 
and  more  alluring  because  of  the  haunting  fear  of 
an  offended  God. 

And  now  the  world  is  a-weary.  The  old 
ideals,  the  old  faiths,  the  old  incentives  to  hope 
and  noble  effort  are  fast  vanishing.  Chris- 
tianity is  no  longer  a  religion,  but  a  sweet 
memory  which  the  people  cannot  bring  them- 
selves to  abandon.  The  ethics  of  Christianity 
have  already  disappeared  before  the  persistent 
questioning  which  is  the  surest  sign  of  the  end 
of  an  era.  There  is  a  babel  of  voices,  an  in- 
ferno of  activities,  but  there  are  few  now-a- 
days  who  hope.  Quo  Vadis?  is  the  cry  again, 
but  this  time  there  is  none  to  answer. 

Despair  is  the  dominant  note  in  music  and 
art  and  literature  —  despair  arid  wistful  long- 
ing for  days  gone  by.  Pessimism  has  become 
a  creed,  which  gains  new  followers  every  day. 
Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann  are  its  prophets, 
FitzGerald  and  James  Thomson  are  its  psalmists, 
and  its  apostles  are  in  every  land. 


THE  WORLD  MELANCHOLY. 


Rediscovering  a  principle  which  the  Buddha 
discovered  two  thousand  years  ago,  the  phi- 
losophers of  to-day  tell  us  of  what  they  call  the 
Desire  of  Life,  the  Will  to  Live.  What  it  is 
they  do  not  know,  and  do  not  attempt  to  know, 
but  that  without  it  humanity  could  not  exist 
they  are  ready  to  prove.  How  else,  they  ask, 
can  the  clinging  to  life  of  those  who  dwell  in 
misery  and  filth  and  poverty  be  explained? 
Life  can  give  them  nothing,  and  yet  they 
choose  to  live.  There  are  a  hundred  ways  of 
escape,  a  hundred  doors  to  death,  and  not  one 
in  ten  thousand  breaks  the  bond  of  body  and 
soul  that  makes  our  life. 

All  philosophy  is  but  the  pushing  back  of 
principles  a  little  nearer  to  the  final  mystery, 
the  great  First  Principle  of  all ;  and  surely  we 
can  get  a  little  nearer  to  the  heart  of  things 
than  this  aphorism  of  the  Desire  of  Life,  the 
consideration  of  the  world  as  Will  and  Idea. 
For  besides  the  instinct  for  life  which  humanity 
shares  with  all  sentient  creation,  with  the 
lion  and  the  bee,  with  the  birds  and  trees  and 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA          7 

flowers,  there  is  another  principle  at  work.  It 
is  a  principle  without  which  man  would  have 
remained  savage  and  soulless,  dwelling  in  the 
forests  and  the  caves,  caring  for  nothing  but  to 
satisfy  his  hunger  and  gratify  his  lust. 

It  is  a  principle  which  blesses  and  which 
bans.  It  has  given  us  Praxiteles'  Hermes  and 
Lionardo's  Monna  Lisa,  Homer's  epics  and 
Shakespeare's  plays,  Beethoven's  sonatas  and 
Schubert's  Serenade;  and  it  has  been  responsi- 
ble for  the  most  terrible  wars  of  humanity,  for 
much  of  its  suffering,  for  many  of  its  diseases, 
for  abominable  sins,  for  incredible  cruelties. 

Life  and  Desire  are  co-existent.  Each  hu- 
man being  is  seeking  something  that  life  gives, 
or  may  be  supposed  to  give.  However 
wretched  his  state,  he  believes  —  though  pos- 
sibly he  may  be  unconscious  of  believing — 
that  he  is  living  on  in  order  to  attain  some 
happiness,  usually  for  himself,  very  rarely  for 
others.  Power,  knowledge,  fame,  money,  love, 
beauty,  pleasure,  some  aims  noble,  some  ig- 
noble—  the  man  without  an  ideal  for  the  at- 
tainment of  which  he  strives  or  wishes  does  not 
exist.  Not  every  one  endeavors  actively  to 
realize  his  desire,  but  each  has  some  end  to 
which  he  looks  and  for  which  he  hopes. 

But  side  by  side  with  Desire,  and  the  multi- 
plication of  desires,  there  has  been  evolved  in 
mankind,  collectively  and  individually,  the 
consciousness  of  an  Influence  in  the  world 
which  is  at  once  the  negation  and  the  comple- 


8          OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A 

ment  of  Desire  —  the  note  of  sadness,  frustra- 
tion, pity.  It  began  with  humanity's  sense  of 
its  own  helplessness,  with  the  tragedies  of 
death  and  pain.  Along  with  the  delight,  the 
passion,  the  joy  in  life  there  grew  the  recogni- 
tion of  another  principle  —  the  realization  that 
all  those  things  that  are  most  pleasant  pass  as 
quickly  as  the  lily  is  withered,  the  purple  of 
the  violet  turned  into  paleness. 

Every  beautiful  thing  in  the  world  preaches 
the  same  lesson.  The  lost  Eden  —  for  a  little 
time  we  think  we  may  find  it  here,  and  then 
the  fair  human  creature  we  loved  because  of 
something  other  than  human  that  was  there  be- 
comes altogether  human;  we  realize  our  ideal 
in  words  or  in  marble  or  on  canvas  and  our 
ideal  inspires  no  longer;  sooner  or  later  is  born 
the  sorrowful  knowledge  that  all  that  is  divine 
in  our  existence  is  but  a  memory  or  a  fore- 
shadowing. Seek  not  your  happiness  here,  nor 
in  love,  nor  in  life,  it  all  seems  to  say:  /  did 
but  taste  a  little  honey  with  the  end  of  the  rod 
that  was  in  mine  hand,  and  Lo,  I  must  die. 

It  is  this  sense  of  frustration,  this  realiza- 
tion that  all  things  present  are  more  frail  and 
weak  than  the  webs  of  spiders  and  more  de- 
ceitful than  dreams,  that  has  resulted  in  the 
world's  progresses  and  its  retrogressions,  on 
the  one  hand  in  the  arts  and  on  the  other  in  re- 
ligions. It  is  now  a  stimulant,  now  a  narcotic. 
It  leads  mankind  to  high  noble  effort,  and  then, 
the  effort  failing,  to  listen  to  the  voice  of  the 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA          9 

prophet  and  the  priest.  For  man,  the  only 
unsatisfied  created  thing,  is  ever  seeking  an 
ideal,  and  the  spirit  that  strives  after  a  diviner 
beauty  than  nature's  is  the  cause  of  all  his  ac- 
tivities and  of  all  his  defeats. 

Inspiration  of  all  poetry  and  song,  of  all  arts; 
moving  humanity  ever  to  search  for  an  elusive 
excellence,  a  hidden  perfection;  it  wrote 
Sappho's  sweet  burning  verses,  full  of  a  hedon- 
ism that  yet  is  akin  to  tears;  it  moulded  the 
Cnidian  Venus  and  the  Olympian  Hermes  and 
the  Singing  Boys  of  Donatello  into  figures  so 
gracious  that  rhythmic  curve  and  subtle 
modelling  seem  to  strain  beyond  nature  after 
the  divine ;  it  put  the  soul  into  the  eyes  of  Botti- 
celli's Madonna  and  traced  the  mystical,  flame- 
like  lines  of  Blake's  Morning  Stars;  Rubinstein 
heard  it  when  he  wrote  his  Melody  and  its 
voice  is  present  in  the  meanest  folk-song;  it 
guides  the  patriot  when  he  dies  for  his  country, 
and  the  lover  reads  it  in  the  glance  of  his  be- 
loved. 

But  it  has  done  other  things  than  these.  By 
it  the  Daughters  of  Music  were  raised  up,  but 
by  it  also  were  they  brought  low.  For  it  in- 
spired the  human  sacrifices  of  a  hundred  creeds, 
the  self-tortures  of  the  Brahmans  and  the 
Flagellants,  the  work  of  the  Inquisition,  the  wars 
of  Christianity  and  Mohammedanism.  Men  be- 
gan by  regarding  the  gods  they  worshipped  as  the 
realization  of  their  own  ideals;  from  this  the 
transition  was  natural  to  the  belief  that  the  gods 
had  power  to  enable  man  to  attain  the  ideal. 


io        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

And  together  with  this  belief  came  the  belief  that 
mankind's  normal  aims  and  delights,  seeing 
that  they  all  led  in  the  end  to  bitterness  and 
failure  and  death,  must  be  wrong;  that  the 
way  to  please  the  gods  was  by  renunciation; 
that  for  a  man  to  attain  to  perfection  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  become  more  than  man. 

And  when  man  learned  that  he  could  obtain 
strength  by  refraining,  asceticism  was  born 
into  the  world,  and  with  it  a  great  part  of  the 
ills  that  have  afflicted  humanity,  but  without 
which,  it  would  seem,  humanity  could  not  have 
progressed.  There  are  no  historic  parallels, 
says  the  savant.  Possibly,  but  there  is  a 
lesson  which  history  demonstrates  so  clearly 
that  none  can  gainsay  it  —  the  lesson  that 
asceticism,  discipline,  the  result  either  of  the 
laws  of  religion,  the  laws  of  the  state,  or  na- 
tional adversities,  is  as  necessary  to  a  civiliza- 
tion, a  race,  or  a  country  as  is  sleep  to  the 
individual,  as  is  the  denuding  of  the  trees  be- 
fore the  life  that  is  in  them  obtains  strength 
for  renewed  manifestation. 

And  behind  it  all,  humanity's  efforts  and  fail- 
ures, its  wars  and  invasions,  its  periods  of 
cultivation  and  its  periods  of  darkness,  its 
times  of  progress  and  its  times  of  reverie,  its 
struggles  to  reach  toward  the  light  in  so  many 
ways  —  behind  it  all  can  we  not  see,  dimly  it 
may  be  but  yet  surely,  an  Order  in  the  world,  a 
law  which  governs  the  activities  of  the  human 
race,  and  which,  when  apprehended,  will  help 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A         n 

us  to  explain  its  past  and,  in  some  little  meas- 
ure, to  foretell  its  future?  For  the  beginning 
of  all  philosophy  is  this  —  that  man  has  ac- 
complished nothing,  save  through  his  renun- 
ciations, through  his  tears. 


THE  LESSON  OF  HISTORY. 


In  considering  the  records  left  to  us  from  the 
past  we  can  hardly  fail  to  be  impressed  by  the 
strangely  alternating  nature  of  the  energies 
and  ideas  that  have  from  the  earliest  times 
dominated  the  Occidental  world.  The  con- 
viction forces  itself  upon  us  that  the  life  and 
thought  of  civilized  mankind  can  be  expressed 
by  two  words  —  action  and  reaction.  We  find 
that  there  have  been  two  forces  at  work,  or 
rather  a  single  force  exerted  in  different  ways. 
Alternately  has  man  been  engaged,  now  in 
searching  in  his  own  soul  for  the  God  whom 
the  visible  world  only  seems  to  conceal,  now  in 
trying  to  find  the  gods  whom  nature  ever  seems 
to  be  on  the  point  of  revealing,  but  never  re- 
veals. 

We  find  that  the  luminous  period  of  any 
nation,  the  period  during  which  it  has  produced 
great  men  and  has  done  great  things,  during 
which  literature  and  the  arts  have  flourished  in 
it,  has  always  been  preceded  by  a  tenebrous 
period,  during  which  religion  has  usually 
played  a  principal  part  in  the  nation's  activities 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA         13 

and  in  which  a  stern  asceticism  has  invariably 
ruled  the  lives  of  its  people.  A  period  of  re- 
ligious ascendency  has  not  always  been  fol- 
lowed by  a  period  of  productive  activity,  but 
no  nation  has  ever  had  a  flowering  time  with- 
out first  passing  through  the  fires  of  discipline, 
and  suppression,  and  pain. 

And  when  we  regard,  not  isolated  nations, 
but  civilization  as  a  whole,  this  law  becomes 
still  more  manifest.  The  earliest  civilization 
of  which  we  have  any  accurate  knowledge  was 
that  of  Egypt,  and  in  the  gigantic  temples,  the 
great  enigmatic  statues,  the  marvellous  tombs 
of  that  land  we  read  the  records  of  a  nation  to 
which  death  was  more  real  than  life,  in  which 
mystery  lay  behind  mystery  and  secret  and 
terrible  knowledge  was  in  the  hands  of  a  few. 
There  may  have  been  a  literature  in  Egypt,  but 
that  there  was  no  art  except  that  regulated  by 
the  sternest  traditionary  laws  we  know.  And 
we  know,  too,  that  had  it  not  been  for  the  re- 
pressive influence  of  their  religion  the  art  of  the 
Egyptians  might  have  progressed  far.  No 
race  was  ever  more  alive  to  beauty  of  form.  In 
one  work  after  another  wrought  by  the  Egyp- 
tians we  find  a  sweet  suggestion  of  the  delicate 
swaying  motion  of  the  human  body,  a  gracious- 
ness  of  line,  a  capacity  for  refinement,  that 
even  the  Greeks  did  not  surpass.  And  it  was 
all  wasted,  all  came  to  naught,  because  the 
priests  stood  in  the  way. 

For  the  Egyptians  there  was  no  flowering 
time,  and  the  great  seated  figures  on  the  banks 


14        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

of  the  Nile  now  seem  to  us  but  the  embodiment 
of  the  spirit  of  Silence,  bearing  no  message  of 
hope  or  of  joy,  telling  us  nothing  but  that  the 
people  who  made  them  were  shackled,  re- 
strained, accursed. 

Far  otherwise  was  it  with  Greece,  whither 
from  Egypt  the  center  of  Mediterranean  civili- 
zation was  transferred.  She,  too,  had  her 
period  of  restraint,  of  asceticism,  but  it  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  period  of  splendid  effort,  glorious 
achievement,  when  poet  and  painter  called  on 
the  world  to  live  with  joy  and  the  straight- 
limbed  maiden  viewed  the  gods  with  scorn. 
The  Greeks  brought  a  new  message  to  the 
world,  a  message  telling  of  strange  joys,  of  the 
enthronement  of  the  body  and  the  perception 
through  the  life  of  the  senses  of  the  divine  in 
humanity.  Among  them  the  search  for  beauty 
became  the  task  of  those  endowed  with  in- 
tellect and  sublimated  desire.  The  priests  of 
Jupiter  and  the  priests  who  at  Tanagra,  the  sun- 
light on  their  naked  bodies,  led  the  procession  of 
Mercury,  were  youths  chosen  for  their  beauty. 
In  a  song  of  Simonides,  telling  of  four  wishes, 
the  first  was  for  health,  the  second  for  beauty. 
In  the  chamber  of  the  Greek  bride  was  set  a 
figure  of  Narcissus  or  of  Hyacinth  that,  gazing 
on  it,  she  might  give  birth  to  a  perfect  child. 

We  find  these  two  great  civilizations  of  the  an- 
tique world,  the  Egyptian  and  the  Greek,  symbol- 
izing the  two  great  forces  which,  now  one,  now 
the  other,  have  ruled  mankind.  We  know  what 
the  Power  was  that  overthrew  the  star-throned, 
softly  smiling  gods  of  Hellenism ;  how  their  deli- 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA         15 

cate  wine-stained  limbs  were  dragged  in  the  dust, 
their  fair  temples  given  over  to  the  lizard  and  the 
bat,  their  sacred  groves  left  to  become  haunted 
wastes  and  desert  places.  We  know  how  flower- 
crown  and  song  and  love  gave  place  to  the  visions 
of  the  anchorite,  the  morbid  excesses  of  a  hundred 
sects.  We  know  how  Christianity  prevailed  in  a 
time  enervated  by  luxury  and  sick  of  culture ;  how 
the  wonderful  work  of  the  past  was  destroyed; 
how  the  iconoclast  went  through  the  length  and 
breadth  of  what  was  then  the  world  leaving  be- 
hind him  the  wreckage  of  an  era,  the  corpse  of  an 
ideal.  The  reign  of  humanism  was  ended;  they 
had  to  do  their  penance  for  all  they  had  tasted  of 
the  divine  before ;  the  sweets  had  turned  to  bitter- 
ness; the  Egyptian  spirit  was  alive  again. 

And  then  for  thirteen  hundred  years  there 
was  darkness;  the  world  turned  its  gaze  to  a 
symbol  of  suffering;  beauty  was  regarded  as 
something  devilish ;  the  very  Devil  himself  was 
supposed  to  be  incarnate  in  a  flower.  Only 
in  Southern  Spain  among  a  handful  of  Moors, 
and  in  Byzantium  in  a  small  company  of 
learned  men,  was  the  feeble  flame  of  culture 
kept  alive.  Throughout  the  rest  of  the  Occi- 
dental world  all  the  vitality  of  the  people  was 
centered  in  a  narrow  and  ignorant  sacerdotal- 
ism, all  the  power  of  the  nation  in  a  brutalized 
and  overbearing  seigneurage. 

But  the  pendulum  swung  again,  and  there 
followed  the  Renaissance  of  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries,  the  grandest  enfranchise- 
ment of  all  recorded  history.  It  is  finished, 
they  had  said  in  the  time  that  even  the  Church 


16        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

now  allows  us  to  call  the  time  of  darkness;  it 
is  finished,  the  Lord  cometh,  the  end  of  the 
world  is  very  near.  Therefore  why  waste  time 
and  imperil  our  immortal  souls  with  thoughts 
of  earthly  things?  Did  not  the  Master  say: 
"Lo,  I  come  quickly?"  Are  not  all  things 
tending  to  destruction? 

And  then  from  this  message,  which  seems  to 
us  a  message  of  terror,  but  which  was  called 
in  those  days  good  news,  gospel;  from  the  pale 
sad  Christ  dying  on  the  cross;  from  the 
doctrine  of  suffering,  the  religion  of  death,  the 
world  turned  again  to  the  old  Greek  ideals,  to 
the  worship  of  the  divine  in  life. 

Once  more  the  pendulum  swung.  The 
Catholic  reaction  in  Italy,  the  Huguenot  move- 
ment in  France,  followed  by  the  puritanism 
which  swept  over  England  and  Scotland,  were 
evidences  of  the  reawakening  of  the  ascetic 
spirit.  The  destruction  of  the  tomb  of  Ron- 
sard  may  serve  as  a  symbol  of  the  new  fury 
against  humanism,  a  fury  which  reached  its 
culmination  in  the  burning  of  Giordano  Bruno. 

Since  then  the  pendulum  has  swung  back- 
ward and  forward  many  times.  The  English 
Commonwealth,  for  example,  was  followed  by 
the  license  of  the  Restoration,  then  by  the  re- 
ligious revival  of  the  eighteenth  century,  then 
by  the  Victorian  age,  with  its  poets  and  artists 
and  philosophers,  its  doubts  and  questionings, 
its  overturning  of  old  beliefs. 

But  the  simile  of  the  pendulum  applies  not 
only  to  the  action  and  reaction  in  the  history  of 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA         17 

mankind,  to  the  alternate  waves  of  humanism 
and  asceticism;  it  holds  good  in  another  and 
a  deeply  suggestive  way.  The  pendulum 
keeps  its  balance,  but  at  each  swing  the  mo- 
mentum is  a  little  less  than  that  which  caused 
the  previous  one;  each  time  a  little  less  distance 
is  covered.  And  so  it  has  been  with  the  world. 
At  each  swing  the  impulse  has  been  less  power- 
ful than  that  which  preceded  it.  The  Renais- 
sance, glorious  as  it  was,  was  less  glorious  than 
the  flowering  time  of  Occidental  humanity  in 
the  Greek  era,  and  the  religious  revival  which 
followed  it  was  but  a  faint  reflection  of  the 
terrible  zeal,  the  frenzy  of  righteousness,  which 
marked  the  opening  centuries  of  the  age  of 
Christianity.  And,  as  the  present  time  has 
been  approached,  action  and  action  have  been 
more  and  more  rapid,  the  impulse  either  way 
ever  fainter. 

And  what  of  to-day?  Voices  in  every  di- 
rection call  to  us,  lament,  adjure.  The  noise 
deafens  us,  but  no  cry  is  louder  than  another. 
Churches  and  sects  and  evangelists  appeal  to 
us,  minatory,  commanding.  A  hundred  phi- 
losophies offer  us  different  secrets  of  happiness, 
different  solutions  of  the  mystery  of  life.  And 
through  it  all  we  remain  indifferent,  seeking  in 
activity,  in  material  well-being,  an  anodyne  for 
all  our  doubts  and  fears.  Neither  cold  nor  hot, 
a  fatal  Laodiceanism  has  seized  the  world. 

Are  we  not  reaching  the  motionless  center, 
the  name  of  which  is  Death? 


THE  HANDWRITING  ON  THE  WALL. 


Beyond  towering  buildings  and  giant  cities ; 
beyond  dazzling  wealth  and  luxury  and  pride; 
beyond  great  armies  and  splendid  warships; 
beyond  even  boundless  wheatfields,  inex- 
haustible mines,  illimitable  forests,  must  we 
look  if  we  would  perceive  the  true  strength  of 
a  nation.  We  must  look  in  its  heart,  to  the 
things  that  move  it,  the  things  that  impel  and 
compel.  We  must  apprehend  the  nation's 
Genius  in  order  to  foretell  its  future  and  under- 
stand its  past. 

Apprehend,  for  to  comprehend  is  not  pos- 
sible. We  can  read  the  literary  work  of  the  old 
Greeks,  for  instance,  with  full  appreciation  of 
its  exquisite  form  and  its  noble  restraint. 
Hellenic  art  can  inspire  us  until  we  perceive 
in  carven  marble  and  clear-cut  gem  something 
of  the  great  mystery  of  absolute  beauty  —  the 
sense  of  frustration,  the  sense  of  longing,  the 
divine  to  which  all  nature  tends.  At  Rouen 
or  Chartres  we  can  understand  something  of 
the  spirit  of  the  France  of  the  knightly  years 
which  gave  Christian  chivalry  to  the  world. 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A         19 

In  the  pearl-like  city  on  the  Arno  we  can  trace 
the  beginnings  of  the  great  movement  toward 
humanism;  in  the  city  of  Aldus  and  of  Giorgi- 
one  we  can  see  that  movement  at  its  splendid 
maturity. 

And  all  these  things  we  discern  as  in  a  glass 
—  darkly.  The  Genius  of  Greece,  of  mediaeval 
France,  of  Tuscany,  of  Venice  has  passed 
away.  We  have  their  songs  and  literatures 
and  arts  and  buildings  and  now  we  are  all 
praisers  of  times  gone  by,  but  our  ears  are  not 
attuned  to  the  same  harmonies,  our  eyes  are 
open  and  they  cannot  see. 

And,  be  it  noted,  a  nation  must  be  judged, 
just  as  a  man,  by  what  it  accomplishes  —  by 
the  works,  that  is,  of  its  rulers,  lawgivers,  sol- 
diers, philosophers,  poets,  painters.  One  hears 
a  great  deal  of  talk  now-a-days  to  the  effect 
that  however  corrupt,  immoral,  and  brainless 
the  dominating  class  of  a  state  may  be,  the 
country's  potentialities  are  not  affected  if  the 
people  retain  their  virtues  and  their  ideals. 
But  in  reality  the  dominating  class  is  the  ex- 
pression of  the  country's  potentialities;  if  it  is 
enfeebled  by  what  in  place  of  a  better  word 
may  be  called  corruption,  the  whole  structure 
is  weak.  The  dominating  class  of  a  state  is 
not  an  accident,  but  an  effect.  Bad  rulers,  bad 
laws,  bad  strategy,  bad  poetry  and  art  are  but 
symptoms  of  the  destruction  of  national  ideals, 
of  the  loss  of  national  vitality,  and  sometimes 
they  are  the  only  visible  symptoms.  The 
people  of  Spain  are  outwardly  of  the  same 


20        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

character  to-day  as  they  were  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  but  Spain  has  lost  her  rich  colonies 
one  by  one.  Turkey  to-day  is  powerless,  keep- 
ing her  territory  only  because  those  who  could 
take  it  away  are  jealous  of  each  other ;  yet  those 
who  have  seen  the  Turkish  soldier  fight  all  bear 
tribute  to  his  courage,  his  tenacity,  his  cheer- 
fulness amid  hardship:  the  Sultan's  army  to 
outward  seeming  is  as  capable  of  great  things 
now  as  in  the  days  when  Mahmud  planted  the 
crescent  flag  upon  the  citadel  of  Byzantium 
and  Solyman  made  all  Europe  quail. 

Walk  along  the  streets  of  modern  Athens, 
and  at  every  turn  you  meet  young  men  and 
maidens  who,  but  for  their  costume,  would  pass 
as  originals  of  the  figures  of  the  Elgin  marbles 
or  the  vases  of  Megara.  On  the  hills  of  Fiesole 
the  tourist  finds  shepherd  boys  whose  very 
counterparts  appear  in  the  frescoes  of  Gozzoli 
and  the  cassone  of  Pinturicchio.  We  know 
into  what  kind  of  men  the  youths  of  old  Athens 
and  fifteenth  century  Tuscany  grew;  we  know 
little  of  the  men  of  modern  Athens  and  of 
modern  Tuscany,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  not 
worth  our  while  to  know. 

What,  then,  is  the  meaning  of  this  paralysis 
that  seizes  a  whole  nation,  that  cannot  be  diag- 
nosed in  the  lives  of  its  people,  but  that  never- 
theless leads  to  helplessness  and  sterility? 

It  means  that  the  nation's  Genius  has  paled, 
that  its  flowering  time  has  passed.  When  the 
Genius  of  a  nation  shines  before  it  bright  and 
clear  that  nation  is  great ;  when  its  Genius  be- 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA         21 

comes  obscured  the  nation,  however  wide  its 
power,  loses  its  strength,  becomes  barren, 
ceases  to  produce,  and  ultimately  dies.  The 
dominating  class  gives  expression  to  the  na- 
tion's Genius.  It  may  express  itself  in  many 
ways,  or  in  few,  but  it  can  express  itself  in  no 
ignoble  way.  A  nation  whose  ideals  are  ig- 
noble is  a  nation  whose  Genius  has  paled. 

We  can,  therefore,  judge  the  vitality  of  a 
country  or  of  a  civilization  only  by  the  great 
things  it  does,  the  great  men  it  produces.  And, 
judged  by  this  standard,  what  can  we  say  of  the 
Occidental  world  to-day? 

What  of  England?  Only  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago  she  had  great  men  in  every  walk  of 
life.  On  a  fine  May  day  in  London  one  might 
meet  Disraeli,  leaning  on  Rowley's  arm  and 
bowing  gravely  to  passers-by  whom  he  never 
saw;  Gladstone,  in  his  gorgeous  carriage  and 
his  shabby  clothes ;  Matthew  Arnold,  chatting 
on  the  steps  of  the  Athenaeum,  and  Herbert 
Spencer,  entering  the  club  for  his  game  of 
billiards;  William  Morris,  denouncing  or  prais- 
ing some  work  at  an  art  exhibition;  Ruskin, 
pointing  out  to  a  student  the  perfections  of  the 
Turner  water-colors  in  the  basement  of  the 
National  Gallery.  In  Chelsea  one  could  see 
Carlyle,  gray  and  bowed,  and  Whistler,  with 
his  dandified  air,  his  cane  and  his  monocle, 
searching  the  old  book-shops  for  seventeenth 
century  fly-leaves  on  which  to  print  his  etch- 
ings, and  Rossetti,  a  wreck  through  sorrow  but 


22         OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A 

still  inspired  to  write  and  paint  things  beautiful 
and  strange,  and  Burne-Jones,  with  his  bril- 
liant eyes  full  of  enthusiasm,  eager  to  catch 
every  hint  of  loveliness  in  sky  and  waving  tree 
and  the  unconscious  play  of  children.  In  the 
suburbs  of  the  city  one  might  sometimes  see 
Darwin,  and,  more  rarely,  Tennyson,  on  one  of 
his  brief  absences  from  his  beloved  island 
home.  Browning  one  met  everywhere,  at  the 
Academy  show,  at  the  first  nights  of  plays,  at 
musicales  and  receptions,  never  alone  and  most 
often  the  center  of  a  group  of  beautiful 
women. 

And  what  of  England  to-day?  How  many 
great  men  has  she  now?  A  few  survivors  of 
the  splendid  Victorian  period  remain  —  Swin- 
burne and  Meredith  and  Kelvin.  But  what  of 
the  contemporary  generation,  as  that  generation 
is  regarded  by  its  own  critics?  How  many  of 
those  who  live  to-day  have  found  the  Roses  of 
Pieria  ?  There  is  Kipling,  who  is  inspired  some- 
times, but  whose  pen  more  often  seems  afflicted 
with  a  febrile  weariness  —  the  weariness  of  the 
age.  And  after  Kipling  in  the  domain  of  letters, 
mediocrity.  In  the  domain  of  art,  mediocrity.  In 
the  domain  of  statesmanship,  one  erratic  strong 
man  and  after  him,  mediocrity.  In  the  domain  of 
science,  several  careful  investigators.  In  the 
domain  of  philosophy,  no  one. 

What  of  the  rest  of  Europe?  A  poet  in 
France,  a  playwright  in  Scandinavia,  in  Russia  a 
novelist-reformer,  a  poet  in  Belgium.  After 
them,  mediocrity. 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA         23 

What  of  America?  Eighty  million  people, 
the  majority  of  them  educated,  the  worlds  of 
science,  art,  and  letters  available  for  them  to 
a  greater  extent  than  ever  before  in  the  history 
of  mankind,  and  the  net  result  of  it  all  at  the 
present  day  a  statesman,  a  handful  of  eminent 
scientific  men  and  inventors,  not  a  single  poet, 
one  painter  (who  prefers  to  live  abroad),  and  two 
or  three  prose  writers.  The  showing  is  pitiful. 

But,  it  may  be  argued,  the  world  has  had  great 
men  before,  whose  greatness  was  not  realized 
till  years,  sometimes  centuries,  after  they  were 
dead.  Yes,  but  the  world  has  also  had  men 
deemed  great  in  their  own  generation  who, 
when  seen  in  the  perspective  of  time,  have  been 
found  not  to  be  great  at  all.  And  the  latter 
class  has  always  outnumbered  the  former. 

The  conclusion  seems  inevitable  that  an- 
aemia has  seized  the  entire  Occident  with 
almost  incredible  suddenness.  Were  one  na- 
tion, or  two  or  three,  alone  affected  no  moral 
could  be  drawn.  Most  countries  have  had 
their  periods  of  stagnation  and  have  recovered 
from  them.  But  now  a  whole  civilization  is 
involved,  not  in  a  period  of  religious  ascend- 
ancy, when  the  West  has  ever  been  sterile,  but 
in  an  age  when  opportunity  is  greater  than  at 
any  time  before  and  when  all  doors  are  open. 

It  is  pleasant,  for  some  of  us,  to  live  in  a 
crepuscular  time.  Neither  gladness  nor  sorrow 
is  there,  but  a  sweet  sad  light  over  all  things  — 
a  light  that  makes  visible  many  a  subtle  curve 


24        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

and  delicate  tone  unseen  in  the  sunshine  or  the 
night.  The  austerities  of  religion  horrify  us, 
we  cannot  understand  the  sacrifices  of  patriot- 
ism, and  we  are  dazzled  and  blinded  by  the 
works  produced  in  periods  of  intense  human- 
istic activity.  Things  strange  and  exotic  move 
us.  We  turn  to  the  despairing  songs  made  in 
the  twilight  of  the  gods  by  the  poets  of  the 
Anthology,  to  the  artificially  simple  verses  of 
the  French  Pleiad,  to  the  bitter  ballades  of 
Villon,  the  flowers  of  evil  of  Baudelaire. 
Hypnerotomachia  Poliphili  attracts  us,  and  Au- 
cassin  and  Nicolette,  and  the  story  of  Cupid  and 
Psyche.  We  become  connoisseurs  of  emotion. 
We  see  the  pathos  of  childhood  and  the 
tragedy  of  age.  There  is  a  tear  in  every  minor 
poet's  sonnet,  a  thrill  in  every  song.  In  place 
of  the  splendid  strong  fellowship  of  human  life 
of  the  luminous  periods,  the  alert  sense  of 
beauty,  the  sympathy  with  all  high  effort,  the 
robust  disregard  of  repressive  conventions;  in 
place  of  the  faith  of  the  tenebrous  periods,  the 
fear  of  offending,  the  restraints  and  renuncia- 
tions, there  is  for  the  many  a  materialism  that 
atrophies  and  degrades  and  for  the  few  a  self- 
consciousness  that  is  morbid,  a  capacity  for 
emotion  that  is  hysterical. 

And  a  message  that  all  the  clairvoyants  of  all 
time,  the  poets  and  prophets  and  philosophers, 
have  brought  us  is  that  there  is  no  room  under 
the  sky  for  those  who  know  not  of  worst  or 
best. 


THE  PHOENICIANS  OF  TO-DAY. 


There  was  once  a  boy,  clear-eyed  and  with 
fair  hair  like  an  aureole,  who  looked  down  from 
the  windows  of  a  cottage  on  a  mountain,  across 
a  valley  of  waving  cornfields,  to  where,  in  the 
far  distance,  a  faint  haze  showed  where  a  great 
city  stood.  And  the  city,  which  he  had  never 
visited,  was  to  him  enchanted,  a  symbol  of  all 
the  mystery  and  glory  of  life. 

Near  his  father's  cottage  was  a  house  in 
which  the  child  was  allowed  to  wander  as  he 
willed.  The  house  was  rich  in  old  Greek 
things,  marbles  and  bronzes  and  vases  from  the 
Hellespont,  and  Smyrna,  and  Cyprus.  And 
there  were  Persian  tiles  of  subtle,  splendid 
color,  and  gems  with  intagli,  and  illuminated 
books,  and  copies  of  great  paintings.  There 
was  La  Gioconda  with  her  delicious  smile,  and 
Botticelli's  unearthly  dancers,  and  Piero  di 
Cosimo's  Death  of  Procris. 

And  the  child,  playing  among  the  flowers 
and  in  the  cornfields,  came  to  know  a  little  of 
Nature's  language,  to  look  for  the  rose  color  of 
the  dawn,  to  listen  for  the  sighing  of  the  wind 


26        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

among  the  trees.  For  at  first  the  flowers  and 
trees  and  sky  were  more  to  him  than  books  and 
pictures  and  craftsman's  fancies,  and  the  striv- 
ing after  a  diviner  beauty  than  Nature's  was 
as  yet  unmeaning  to  him. 

Till,  one  day,  rising  early  as  was  his  wont, 
he  chanced  to  enter  a  room  while  the  first  rays 
of  sunshine  were  falling  on  a  great  head  of 
Pallas  Athene,  the  chief  treasure  of  the  rich 
man's  collection.  Pale,  alone,  against  a  dark 
undefined  background,  every  line  seen  clear, 
that  sculptured  thing  told  to  him  its  story  of 
a  creation  not  dead  and  not  alive.  Its  voiceless 
lips  spoke  marvellous  words,  and  the  invisible 
crown  of  secret  wisdom  lay  in  the  fiery  lines 
of  its  hair. 

And  then  he  began  to  understand.  The 
whole  of  nature  became  attuned  to  another  key, 
and  he  searched  always  for  some  echo  or 
whisper  of  that  hidden  music.  There  was  an 
unaccustomed  wonder  in  things,  some  hint  of 
elusive  excellence  in  gem  and  picture  and 
tapestry,  in  the  writings  of  the  poets,  in  the 
histories  of  great  men  and  deeds  of  olden  days. 

The  time  came  for  the  youth  to  go  out  into 
the  world.  He  left  his  father's  cottage  and 
went  down  into  the  city,  that  had  seemed  so 
glorious  from  afar.  Instead  of  the  enchanted 
city  of  his  dreams  he  found  narrow  streets  with 
hideous,  dingy  buildings,  and  men  ever  hurry- 
ing, and  giant  machines  roaring.  On  the  worn 
faces  of  the  people  in  the  daytime  was  writ  the 
lust  for  gain,  in  the  nighttime  the  greed  for 
pleasure. 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A         27 

He  would  have  fled,  but  shame  prevented 
him.  It  was  only  for  a  little  while,  he  said,  and 
then  he  would  depart  for  ever  from  that  ac- 
cursed place.  He  became  a  worker  in  the  city, 
spending  his  days  in  painful  effort  to  earn  the 
means  to  live.  And  always  the  thought  of  the 
world  he  had  left  was  with  him  —  the  harmo- 
nies of  field  and  sky,  the  sweet  suggestions  of 
poet  and  of  painter. 

The  years  passed,  and  his  work  bore  fruit. 
He  grew  rich,  and  filled  his  house  with  beauti- 
ful and  rare  and  costly  things.  He  had  no 
time  to  enjoy  them,  but,  he  told  himself,  he 
would  soon  give  up  the  toil  for  gold  and  then 
he  would  go  back  to  the  old  ideals  and  enthusi- 
asms. He  remembered  how  the  work  of 
writer  and  artist  had  thrilled  him,  and,  he  said, 
he  could  return  to  the  delicious  life  of  former 
days  when  he  willed. 

And  at  length  he  ceased  from  his  labor  and 
built  himself  a  house  on  a  mountain,  like  the 
house  in  which  so  many  hours  of  his  childhood 
had  been  spent.  And  thither  he  had  his  pic- 
tures and  bronzes  and  tapestries  and  books 
taken,  and,  when  all  was  ready,  he  went  to 
enjoy  those  things  that  he  had  dreamed  of 
through  many  years. 

It  was  all  unmeaning  to  him.  It  had  all 
turned  to  dust  and  ashes  in  his  grasp. 

Is  not  this  the  story  of  many  a  toiler  in 
great  cities?  Is  it  not  the  story  of  the  Ameri- 
can people  ?  While  they  dream  of  noble  things 


28        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

to  be,  they  let  them  wait.  They  will  wait  for 
beautiful  cities,  and  in  the  meanwhile  their 
cities  become  so  hideous  that  they  must  be 
razed  before  beauty  is  possible.  They  will 
wait  for  a  great  literature,  and  in  the  mean- 
while their  newspapers  and  cheap  magazines 
are  vulgarizing  the  minds  of  the  people,  de- 
stroying their  language.  They  will  wait  for 
high  national  ideals,  and  in  the  meanwhile  in- 
dividualism, more  perfectly  developed  than 
ever  before  since  the  decadence  of  Rome,  caring 
nothing  for  country  or  state  or  city,  destroys 
morality  in  business  and  makes  legislators  and 
public  officials  corrupt  to  an  extent  that,  after 
revelation  upon  revelation,  is  even  now  but 
faintly  realized. 

Every  moment,  said  one  of  the  wisest  phi- 
losophers of  the  nineteenth  century,  some  form 
grows  perfect  in  hand  or  face ;  some  tone  on  the 
hills  or  the  sea  is  choicer  than  the  rest;  some 
mood  of  passion  or  insight  or  intellectual  ex- 
citement is  irresistibly  real  and  attractive  for 
us  —  for  that  moment  only.  While  all  melts 
under  our  feet,  we  may  well  catch  at  any  ex- 
quisite passion,  or  any  contribution  to  knowl- 
edge that  seems  by  a  lifted  horizon  to  set  the 
spirit  free  for  a  moment,  or  any  stirring  of  the 
senses,  strange  dyes,  strange  colors,  and  curi- 
ous odors,  or  work  of  the  artist's  hands,  or  the 
face  of  one's  friend.  Not  to  discriminate  every 
moment  some  passionate  attitude  in  those 
about  us,  and  in  the  brilliancy  of  their  gifts 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A        29 

some  tragic  dividing  of  forces  on  their  ways,  is, 
on  this  short  day  of  frost  and  sun,  to  sleep  be- 
fore evening.  We  are  all  condamnes,  all  under 
sentence  of  death  but  with  a  sort  of  indefinite 
reprieve.  Some  spend  this  interval  in  listless- 
ness,  some  in  high  passions,  the  wisest,  at  least 
among  the  children  of  this  world,  in  art  and 
song. 

It  is  all  there  is.  If  a  man,  or  a  nation,  with 
ears  to  hear  and  eyes  to  see,  becomes  deaf  and 
blind  to  those  things  which  are  the  reflections 
and  symbols  of  the  ultimate  ideal,  the  side- 
realized  life,  that  man,  that  nation,  is  a  failure. 
To  gain  that  which  is  best  in  life  is  success  in 
life;  to  lose  it  is  defeat.  Viewed  in  this  light, 
the  American  people  to-day  are  a  failure. 
Their  rich  men  buy  rare  books  and  famous 
pictures,  but  how  many  of  them  could  we  im- 
agine taking  part  in  those  conversations  be- 
tween Florentine  plutocrats  and  artists  in  the 
gardens  of  the  Medici  in  the  day  of  Lorenzo 
the  Magnificent;  how  many,  even,  would  be 
intellectually  fit  to  join  in  a  discussion  at  a 
Roman  gentleman's  table  in  the  decadent 
Neronic  period? 

Americans  have  often  been  grieved  and  as- 
tonished at  the  behavior  of  distinguished  visit- 
ors from  Europe.  They  have  come  here,  have 
been  received  with  much  honor,  have  been  en- 
tertained with  all  lavishness,  have  seen  the 
towering  buildings  and  gorgeous  clubs  of  New 
York,  the  stockyards  of  Chicago,  the  steel 
works  of  Pittsburg,  and  the  miscellaneous 


30        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A 

architectural  effects  of  Washington;  and  then 
they  have  gone  home  to  say  things  about 
America  bitter,  biting,  sarcastic,  and  some- 
times even  untrue.  Americans  have  not  been  able 
to  understand  it,  and,  in  their  turn,  have  had 
many  caustic  things  to  say  about  Europe  in 
general  and  eminent  Europeans  in  particular. 

But  the  explanation  would  seem  to  lie  deeper 
than  envy,  or  the  lack  of  courtesy  due  from 
guest  to  host.  These  visitors  from  foreign 
lands  cannot  all  have  been  ill-bred  clowns; 
there  must  be  some  reason  for  their  boorish- 
ness.  Is  it  not  to  be  found  in  the  intense,  all- 
pervading,  deadly  materialism  which  is  all  that 
America  has  to  show? 

Some  faint  trace  of  nobler  life  is  still  to  be 
found  in  Europe;  the  impulse  is  lost,  but  the 
memory  of  diviner  days  remains.  And  so, 
when  a  traveller  of  quick  perception  visits  us 
he  is  often,  without  realizing  the  cause,  op- 
pressed and  overcome  by  a  sentiment  of  an- 
tipathy, estrangement.  It  is  all  so  perfectly  or- 
ganized; the  machine  —  at  least  so  far  as  the 
stranger  can  see  —  runs  so  smoothly;  and  it  all 
results  in  such  utter  futility. 

There  are  men  in  America  who  recognize 
and  deplore  the  lack  of  a  national  ideal  and  who 
do  what  they  can  to  awaken  the  people  to  a 
sense  of  their  grovelling  condition.  But  a  na- 
tional Genius  cannot  be  made  to  order;  by  no 
amount  of  legislation  can  nobility  of  spirit  be 
ordained.  The  degradation  of  America  is  ex- 
hibited to  an  appalling  degree  in  the  lives  of 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA         31 

the  people.  The  very  rich  live  in  a  manner 
which  is  nauseating  in  its  aimlessness,  vul- 
garity, ineptitude,  and  imbecility.  They  are 
such  a  by-word  that  no  newspaper,  editorially, 
ever  takes  them  seriously,  but  this  does  not 
prevent  the  majority  of  the  press  from  describ- 
ing at  great  length  all  the  doings  of  the  Upper 
Class — their  dresses,  diamonds,  dinner  parties, 
dances,  and  divorces.  A  little  lower  down  in 
the  social  scale  what  may  be  called  the  stock- 
broker class  —  the  men  who  are  to  be  seen 
in  the  restaurants  at  night  trying  to  galvanize 
themselves  into  neurotic  emotion  writh  wine 
and  music  and  pretty  women  —  exhibit  char- 
acteristics even  more  sordid.  In  all  classes  of 
American  society  the  poison  is  at  work  —  the 
poison  of  activity  directed  toward  ignoble 
ends.  To  become  rich  has  been  desired  by  men 
ever  since  money  was  invented,  but  not  till  now 
and  here  since  the  days  of  the  Phoenicians  has 
the  effort  of  an  entire  people  been  concentrated 
so  completely  on  this  one  ideal. 

And  what  befell  the  Phoenicians  we  know  — 
how  they  disappeared  leaving  no  heritage  to 
the  world,  no  beautiful  thing,  no  uplifting 
thought,  no  example  of  heroism  or  of  high 
achievement,  and  how,  even  as  the  Prophet  had 
foretold,  their  cities  became  desolate,  a  place 
to  spread  nets  upon. 


THE  SLEEP  OF  THE  ORIENT 


One  day  in  the  Summer  of  1904  three  Eng- 
lishmen entered  a  low  doorway  between  dirty, 
tawdry  houses  and,  after  passing  through  open 
courtyards  and  a  maze  of  dark  passages 
and  chapels,  found  themselves  in  a  high  pil- 
lared sanctuary  in  which,  thrown  into  clear 
relief  against  the  surrounding  obscurity,  was 
a  wonderful  golden  shrine,  adorned  with  tur- 
quoises and  pearls,  with  amber  and  coral  and 
lapis  lazuli.  And  seated  on  a  throne  within  the 
shrine  was  the  most  famous  statue  in  all  the 
world. 

The  place  was  Lhasa,  the  cathedral  was  the 
Jo-Kang,  the  statue  was  that  image  of  the 
Buddha  which  was  given  by  the  King  of 
Magadha  to  the  Chinese  Emperor  for  his  aid 
when  the  Yavanas  were  overrunning  the  plains 
of  India  and  which,  as  the  dowry  of  the  Prin- 
cess Konjo,  was  taken  to  Lhasa  from  Peking 
twelve  hundred  years  ago. 

Until  that  Summer  day  no  white  man  had 
seen  the  statue,  the  most  sacred  thing  in  the 
sacred  city  beyond  the  Himalayas.  The  Eng- 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA        33 

lishmen  who  were  admitted  to  the  Jo-Kang  — 
and  the  Chinese  Amban,  who  obtained  the 
privilege  for  them,  paid  for  it  later  with  his 
life  —  had  supposed  that  they  would  see  a 
Buddha  like  the  other  Buddhas  of  countless 
temples  of  the  Orient  —  the  ascetic  figure,  the 
mystical,  absorbed,  ageless  countenance,  the 
same  from  Ceylon  to  Japan. 

But  the  image  in  the  Holy  of  Holies  of 
Lhasa,  illumined  by  the  light  of  great  golden 
lamps,  set  in  its  jewel-decked  shrine,  beneath 
the  dragon-borne  canopy  with  its  turquoise 
crown,  is  not  the  figure  of  the  Blessed  One, 
already  more  than  man,  who,  under  the  bo-tree 
of  Uruvela,  cleft  the  mountain  of  ignorance 
and  saw  that  all  was  illusion  and  that  all  was 
vanity.  The  face  of  the  Buddha  of  the  Jo- 
Kang  is  rounded,  alert,  youthful;  the  smile, 
enigmatic  it  may  be,  but  almost  triumphant. 
Here,  says  one  of  those  who  saw  the  figure,  is 
nothing  of  the  Melancholia  who  has  known  too 
much  and  who  has  renounced  it  all  as  vanity. 
Here,  instead,  is  the  quiet  happiness  and  the 
quick  capacity  for  pleasure  of  the  boy  who  had 
never  yet  known  either  pain,  or  disease,  or 
death.  It  is  Gautama  as  a  pure  and  eager 
prince,  without  a  thought  for  the  morrow,  or 
a  care  for  to-day. 

In  this  figure,  to  which  for  a  thousand  years 
the  Buddhists  of  all  Asia  have  made  pilgrim- 
age, braving  hardships  greater  than  the  travel- 
lers to  Mecca,  making  their  way  over  terrible 
deserts  and  everlasting  mountain  snows,  we 


34        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A 

can  read  a  symbol  —  a  symbol  that  to-day 
shines  forth  more  clearly  than  at  any  other 
time  since  the  great  golden  statue  was  fash- 
ioned, by  no  man,  the  Buddhists  say,  but  by 
Visrakarma,  the  constructive  force  of  the  uni- 
verse. For  the  youthful,  gracious  figure  of  the 
Jo-Kang  reminds  us  that  Buddhism  is  a  two- 
fold religion,  that  it  indeed  leads  to  great  re- 
nunciations, to  contempt  for  life,  to  self-morti- 
fication, to  the  negation  of  desire;  but  that  it 
also  teaches  the  sacredness  and  interdepend- 
ence of  all  manifestations  of  life,  that  there  is 
a  divine  order  in  things,  that  humanity  is  evolv- 
ing to  a  condition  ever  nearer  to  perfection. 

Christ  was  born  in  a  manger,  Mohammed  in 
a  desert,  but  the  Siddartha  of  the  Buddhist 
legend  was  born  in  a  garden  of  roses  and  grew 
up  in  a  palace  of  marble  and  cedar-wood,  sur- 
rounded by  princely  playfellows,  and  musi- 
cians, and  beautiful  girls.  As  the  centuries 
have  passed  the  story  of  his  early  years  has 
ever  been  more  richly  embroidered,  until  now 
the  legend  is  a  recital  of  all  the  suavities  of  our 
world-existence,  all  the  delights  that  nature 
and  art  bestow,  all  the  allurements  of  love  and 
of  desire. 

Buddhism,  in  some  respects  the  most  ascetic 
of  all  religions,  is  capable  of  developing  into  a 
belief,  or  a  philosophy,  as  brilliantly  humanistic 
as  that  of  the  Greeks.  The  sense  of  frustra- 
tion, of  the  helplessness  of  humanity,  has  ever 
been  more  lively  in  the  Orient  than  in  the  Occi- 
dent. While  the  Western  divine  warns  us  that 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA        35 

all  shall  burn,  and  with  it  the  world,  and  all  the 
memory  and  fame  of  it  shall  die,  the  Eastern 
teacher  goes  far  beyond  this,  and  tells  us  that 
all  that  is  is  but  illusion,  that  the  soul  is 
drowned  in  the  sea  of  conditioned  existence, 
that  if  she  sing  within  her  chrysalis  of  flesh  and 
matter,  that  even  if  she  whisper  to  herself  that 
she  exists,  she  is  of  the  earth,  ensnared  in  the 
webs  of  delusion.  Saint  Simeon  lived  on  his 
pillar  and  the  anchorites  of  Ireland  on  lonely 
storm-swept  rocks,  but  the  hermit  of  Tibet  to- 
day, with  his  rosary  of  human  bones  and  the 
top  of  a  skull  to  hold  his  food,  lives  in  a  cave, 
walled  up  so  that  no  light  may  penetrate,  and 
with  an  opening  only  large  enough  to  allow  a 
hand  to  be  passed  out. 

Yes,  but  they  too  have  lips  to  kiss  with, 
hearts  to  love,  and  eyes  to  see,  and  if  their  re- 
nunciations have  been  more  supreme,  their  ca- 
pacity for  joy  is  greater.  They  live  an  intenser 
life  than  we.  In  place  of  the  Morte  Amoureuse 
of  the  West  is  the  Eastern  story  of  the  monk 
who  seven  times  foreswore  the  world,  and 
seven  times  returned  to  it.  The  Italian  Despot 
built  a  Christian  church  to  glorify  an  illicit 
passion,  but  the  Eastern  King  when  his  favor- 
ite died  built  the  Taj  Mahal,  the  result  of  the 
labor  of  twenty  thousand  men  for  twenty 
years. 

From  the  East  the  world  has  learned  mysti- 
cism, esoteric  religion,  the  negation  of  the 
flesh  by  means  of  violent  austerities;  but  out 
of  the  East  also  have  come  those  things  that 


36        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

are  types  and  symbols  of  the  delight  that  life 
has  to  give,  enchanted  pleasures,  subtilized  de- 
sires —  rose  gardens  and  dancing  girls,  rich 
perfumes  and  precious  gems,  myrrh  and  aloes 
and  opium,  amber  and  sandal-wood,  rubies  and 
pearls  and  emeralds,  fabrics  of  silk  and  marvel- 
lously wrought  textiles,  carvings  of  ivory  and 
crystal  and  jade. 

And  out  of  that  night  which  ascetic  religion 
has  cast  over  the  Orient  there  have  come 
strange  flowers,  fascinating  as  moonlight,  in- 
scrutable as  the  stars.  Persia  has  produced 
sweet-cadenced  verses,  passionate  with  the  pas- 
sion of  those  for  whom  the  visible  world  exists 
but  who  must  steal  all  joy.  India  gives  us  the 
visions  of  those  who  have  tortured  themselves 
into  clairvoyance,  have  stupefied  themselves 
into  an  artificial  paradise.  From  China  come 
porcelains  blue  as  the  sky  after  rain,  rose- 
colored,  pearl-white,  of  tenderest  green. 

The  Orient  has  been  asleep,  but  it  has 
dreamed,  and  its  dreams  have  been  sweet. 

But  they  have  been  dreams  —  nothing  else. 
That  in  the  past  the  East  has  been  awake  we 
know,  and  even  now  we  are  beginning  to  learn 
of  the  treasures  of  philosophy  and  romance  and 
song  —  the  productions  of  periods  of  alert  and 
luminous  life  —  which  have  been  preserved 
through  centuries  of  obtenebration  in  China 
and  the  Indies  and  Korea. 

Will  there  be  another  awakening?  Will 
India  again  be  inspired  by  the  spirit  which 
wrote  the  Vedic  hymns ;  will  her  Genius  again 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA        37 

shine  bright  and  clear?  Will  China,  recover- 
ing as  she  once  recovered  before  from  a  period 
of  darkness  and  sterility,  produce  instead  of 
collate,  arrange,  and  contemplate  what  has 
already  been  done?  We  cannot  tell.  The 
Hindus,  a  conquered  people,  find  their  ideal  in 
the  extinction  of  life  and  of  desire.  The  Chi- 
nese, the  oldest  nation  in  the  world,  seem 
weary,  spiritless,  without  even  the  negative 
ideal  of  the  Hindus.  It  would  seem  that  these 
two  ancient  civilizations  of  the  East  must  be 
classed  with  the  civilization  of  the  West  as 
having  played  their  part  in  the  world's  pro- 
gress. Their  ideals  have  departed;  the  Genius 
of  each  has  paled. 

Is  there  then  no  hope  for  humanity,  no  promise 
of  a  new  light  to  disperse  the  clouds  of  pessimism, 
disappointment,  disbelief,  to  heal  the  atrophy 
that  results  from  low  ideals  ? 

The  answer  has  been  given  —  in  the  Sea  of 
Japan,  on  the  plains  of  Manchuria,  on  the  hills 
of  Liao-Tung. 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  CIVILIZATION. 


Evolved  during  centuries  of  isolated  life,  per- 
fected by  discipline  compared  with  which  even 
that  of  the  Spartans  was  license,  encouraged  by 
the  natural  conditions  of  temperate  climate  and 
a  country  as  beautiful  as  Italy  or  the  islands 
of  the  Grecian  archipelago,  there  has  appeared 
in  the  Farthest  East  a  nation  which  is  the  best 
hope  of  humanity  to-day  —  a  nation  whose 
Genius  shines  before  it  clear  as  a  star,  with 
ideals  which  are  noble,  with  memories  that  in- 
spire, with  leaders  who  are  great. 

In  the  last  eighteen  months  the  Occident  has 
been  learning  a  new  word.  It  was  whispered 
around  the  correspondents'  campfires  at  Feng- 
huang-Cheng,  while  the  priests  of  Shinto  and  of 
Buddha,  in  their  shimmering  silken  robes,  were 
paying  honor  to  those  who  were  slain  in  the 
first  great  battle  of  the  war;  it  was  heard  be- 
neath the  rose-trees  of  Liao-Yang;  when  Port 
Arthur  fell  the  West  began  to  talk  of  it ;  after 
Mukden  it  was  to  be  read  in  newspapers  from 
San  Francisco  to  Vienna;  and  now,  when 
Japan's  triumph  over  a  foe  of  whom  all  Europe 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA        39 

was  afraid  is  complete,  commentators  everywhere 
are  discussing  bushido. 

They  call  it  the  Soul  of  Japan,  forgetting  that 
the  standard  of  conduct  of  a  people  is  not  its 
soul,  but  the  manifestation  of  its  soul.  They 
tell  the  West  to  learn  bushido,  but  they  forget 
that  there  can  be  no  effect  without  a  cause  and 
that  a  noble  rule  of  life  is  the  result  of  nobility 
of  spirit,  of  noble  national  ideals,  of  steadfast- 
ness of  purpose,  of  unspoiled  capacity  for  en- 
thusiasm, of  a  Genius  that  guides  and  inspires. 

What  bushido  does  the  world  knows.  It  has 
seen  warriors  go  to  certain  destruction,  not 
only  in  the  excitement  of  battle,  but  coldly,  de- 
liberately, sacrificing  themselves  that  their 
cause  might  gain  some  slight  advantage;  it  has 
seen  all  considerations  of  personal  glory  cast 
aside  —  even  the  glory  that  comes  from  heroic 
death  —  and  each  soldier  of  an  army  inspired 
only  by  the  hope  of  the  triumph  of  that  army  as 
a  whole ;  it  has  seen  a  fighting  force  on  land  and 
another  on  the  sea  operating  with  no  hint  of 
discord  among  the  commanders;  it  has  seen  an 
entire  nation  aiding  the  army  and  the  navy  in 
every  possible  way,  even  the  schoolboys  form- 
ing themselves  into  companies  to  till  the  fields 
of  those  who  were  fighting  their  country's  bat- 
tles; it  has  seen  fathers  kill  their  children  in 
order  to  be  allowed  to  join  the  troops  in  the 
field,  mothers  kill  themselves  in  order  that  their 
sons  might  the  more  unhesitatingly  offer  their 
lives  for  the  Emperor,  maidens  pray  that  their 
lovers  at  the  front  might  be  slain  or  wounded; 


40        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

it  has  seen  the  Japanese  Nation,  though  its  very 
existence  was  at  stake,  though  it  knew  that 
slaughter  and  rapine  would  be  its  lot  were  the 
Muscovite  to  conquer,  composed,  confident, 
admitting  no  doubt  or  fear,  no  hesitation  on 
entering  upon  the  struggle;  it  has  seen  that 
nation,  while  the  issue  was  uncertain,  suffering 
silently  and  cheerfully,  and  not  one  man  in  all 
its  millions  failing  to  do  what  is  the  hardest 
thing  of  all  in  a  time  of  national  excitement,  to 
keep  silence;  it  has  seen  that  nation  in  time 
of  victory  courteous  to  the  vanquished,  violating 
no  canon  of  good  taste  in  its  celebrations,  express- 
ing no  triumph,  making  no  boast,  and  finally,  it 
has  seen  the  Japanese  people  display  anger  for  the 
first  time,  not  at  the  continuance  of  the  war,  not 
at  the  prospect  of  the  loss  of  more  lives  and  the 
imposition  of  greater  burdens,  but  at  the  con- 
clusion of  peace  when  further  struggle  would 
have  resulted  in  further  triumph. 

It  has  seen  all  these  things  —  has  seen  them 
and  marvelled.  And  yet  even  now  it  does  not 
understand.  When  a  man  receives  a  stinging 
blow  he  remains  dazed  for  a  time.  The  world 
within  the  past  year  has  received  such  a  blow 
as  it  had  not  received  for  two  thousand  years, 
and  it  is  still  dazed.  It  should  have  been  pre- 
pared. Perhaps  it  would  have  been  prepared 
had  it  not  been  that  it  was  so  flattered  and 
dazzled  by  Japan's  adaptation  of  the  unes- 
sential concomitants  of  the  civilization  of  the 
West  that  it  forgot  to  study  her  retention  of 
the  essentials  of  her  own  civilization,  the  things 
that  count,  the  things  that  impel  and  compel. 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA        41 

And  now,  with  its  slowly  dawning  realiza- 
tion of  what  the  events  in  the  Far  East  mean, 
the  Occident  talks  of  bushido,  the  knightly 
code  of  the  Japanese,  the  standard  of  conduct 
which  guides  the  warrior,  the  counsel  of  per- 
fection which  is  held  up  as  the  ideal  for  the 
entire  nation.  But  bushido  is  not  the  cause  of  the 
strength  of  the  Japanese;  it  is  a  manifestation  of 
their  strength,  and  that  strength  they  have  at- 
tained through  an  order  of  life  which  has  taught 
the  individual  that  his  existence  is  valueless, 
meaningless,  save  in  relation  to  that  of  the  family, 
the  community,  the  state. 

Japan  comes  by  her  strength  naturally,  in- 
evitably. It  is  the  strength  born  of  the  repres- 
sions of  a  thousand  years.  Discipline  such  as 
she  has  undergone  could  not  but  make  her 
strong.  In  the  ultimate  analysis,  of  course,  the 
strength,  the  Genius,  the  virtue  as  the  ancients 
would  have  called  it,  of  the  Japanese,  as  of  any 
other  nation  or  race,  must  remain  unexplained. 
Why  this  people  should  have  chosen  those 
things  that  make  for  strength  and  not  for 
drunkenness  we  cannot  tell,  any  more  than  we 
can  tell  why  one  human  being  is  beautiful  and 
another  deformed,  why  one  man  is  a  poet  and 
another  a  thief,  why  one  is  an  animal  and  in 
another  passion  leaves  the  ground  to  lose  itself 
in  the  sky. 

But  as  we  know  that  if,  possessing  a  spark  of 
the  divine  fire,  a  man  guard  it  by  discipline  and 
fan  it  into  flame  by  work  and  keep  it  bright 
by  suffering  and  hardship,  that  man  is  destined 


42         OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

to  become  great,  so  we  know  that  a  nation  with 
noble  ideals,  its  energies  conserved  by  denial, 
its  arms  sharpened  by  necessity,  must  conquer 
and  prevail.  And  by  learning  the  extent  of  the 
sacrifices  and  hardships  which  have  been 
Japan's  we  can  judge  her  power  to-day. 

In  his  last  book,  the  proofsheets  of  which 
were  waiting  for  his  correction  as  he  lay  upon 
his  deathbed,  the  man  who,  of  all  Occidentals, 
perhaps  came  nearer  to  knowing  the  Japanese 
people  than  any  other,  described  for  us  the 
constitution  of  society  in  Japan  as  it  existed 
until  a  few  years  ago  and  which,  though  no 
longer  legally  appointed,  is  still  in  all  its  es- 
sentials the  organization  of  the  nation.  About 
the  sacred  person  of  the  Mikado,  says  Lafcadio 
Hearn,  "we  see  the  tribes  ranged  in  obeisance 
—  each  tribe,  nevertheless,  maintaining  its  own 
ancestral  cult;  and  the  clans  forming  these 
tribes,  and  the  communities  forming  these 
clans,  and  the  households  forming  these  com- 
munities, have  all  their  separate  cults;  and  out 
of  the  mass  of  these  cults  have  been  derived  the 
customs  and  the  laws.  Yet  everywhere  the 
customs  and  the  laws  differ  more  or  less, 
because  of  the  variety  of  their  origins; 
they  have  this  only  in  common, —  that  they 
exact  the  most  humble  and  implicit  obedience, 
and  regulate  every  detail  of  private  and 
public  life.  Personality  is  wholly  suppressed 
by  coercion;  and  the  coercion  is  chiefly 
from  within,  not  from  without, —  the  life  of 
every  individual  being  so  ordered  by  the  will 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A        43 

of  the  rest  as  to  render  free  action,  free  speak- 
ing, or  free  thinking,  out  of  the  question.  This 
means  something  incomparably  harsher  than 
the  socialistic  tyranny  of  early  Greek  society; 
it  means  religious  communism  doubled  with  a 
military  despotism  of  the  most  terrible  kind. 
The  individual  did  not  legally  exist, —  except 
for  punishment ;  and  from  the  whole  of  the  pro- 
ducing classes,  whether  serfs  or  freemen,  the 
most  servile  submission  was  ruthlessly  exacted. 
It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  any  intelligent  man 
of  modern  times  could  endure  such  conditions 

and  live The  incessant  and  multiform 

constraint  upon  mental  and  moral  life  would 
of  itself  be  enough  to  kill." 

And  the  same  writer,  in  telling  us  of  the 
manner  of  discipline  under  which  the  Japanese 
lived,  describes  the  laws  which  regulated  the 
existence  of  a  farmer  with  an  income,  for  in- 
stance, of  a  hundred  koku  of  rice.  He  might 
build  a  house  sixty  feet  long,  but  no  longer; 
he  was  forbidden  to  construct  it  with  a  room 
containing  an  alcove;  and  he  was  not  allowed 
—  except  by  special  permission  —  to  roof  it 
with  tiles.  No  member  of  his  family  was  per- 
mitted to  wear  silk.  Three  kinds  of  viands 
only  were  to  be  served  at  the  wedding  of  such 
a  farmer's  daughter  or  son;  and  the  quality  as 
well  as  the  quantity  of  the  soup,  fish,  or  sweet- 
meats offered  to  the  wedding  guests  was 
legally  fixed.  So  likewise  the  number  of  the 
wedding-gifts;  even  the  cost  of  the  presents  of 
rice-wine  and  dried  fish  was  prescribed,  and  the 


44        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

quality  of  the  single  fan  which  it  was  permissi- 
ble to  offer  to  the  bride 

And  when  the  farmer  became  a  grandfather 
the  presents  he  was  allowed  to  give  to  the  new- 
born child  were  all  ordained.  On  the  occasion 
of  the  Boy's  Festival  the  gifts  from  the  whole 
family,  including  the  grandparents,  were  lim- 
ited by  law  to  one  paper  flag  and  two  toy 
spears. 

This  rigor  of  law  governed  every  detail  of 
life.  The  manner  of  speech  to  a  superior,  an 
equal,  or  an  inferior,  was  prescribed.  Even  the 
manner  of  smiling  was  subject  to  rule;  it  was 
a  grave  offense  so  to  smile  in  addressing  a  su- 
perior that  the  back  teeth  could  be  seen. 

And  through  it  all  the  Japanese  people  re- 
mained joyous  and  young;  submitting  to  re- 
straint willingly;  eager  and  alert;  sensitive  to 
all  things  beautiful.  The  West  speaks  of 
Japan  as  an  ancient  country,  but  the  age  of  a 
nation  is  not  to  be  reckoned,  as  the  age  of  a 
man,  by  years,  but  by  the  sum  of  the  effort  put 
forth  when  the  nation,  emerging  from  its  tene- 
brous period,  realizes  itself,  draws  on  the  power 
it  has  stored  up,  and  gives  expression  to  its 
ideals. 

Japan  is  beginning  to  do  that.  She  is 
young;  her  flowering  time  is  not  over,  but  is 
only  now  arriving,  and  before  it  has  gone  by 
she  is  destined  to  impress  upon  the  Occident 
the  civilization  which  she  has  evolved  through 
many  centuries.  And  the  weapon  which  she 
has  forged  for  her  work  in  the  world  is  not  her 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA        45 

army  or  her  navy,  not  her  statecraft  or  her 
mastery  of  the  science  of  the  West,  but  bushido, 
hammered  out  of  pure  metal,  tempered  by  dis- 
cipline, sharpened  by  obedience,  proved  by  re- 
straint. 

It  is  an  ideal  new  and  strange  to  the  West. 
Take,  says  one  writer,  the  average  scheme  of 
life  of  the  average  society  of  the  West,  and 
bushido,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  represents  its 
exact  antithesis.  It  offers  the  ideal  of  poverty 
instead  of  wealth,  humility  in  place  of  ostenta- 
tion, reserve  instead  of  reclame,  self-sacrifice  in 
place  of  selfishness,  the  care  of  the  interest  of 
the  State  rather  than  that  of  the  individual. 
Bushido  inspires  ardent  courage  and  the  refusal 
to  turn  the  back  upon  the  enemy;  it  looks  death 
calmly  in  the  face  and  prefers  it  to  ignominy  of 
any  kind.  It  preaches  submission  to  authority 
and  the  sacrifice  of  all  private  interests, 
whether  of  self  or  of  family,  to  the  common 
weal.  It  requires  its  disciples  to  submit  to  a 
strict  physical  and  mental  discipline,  develops 
a  martial  spirit,  and,  by  lauding  the  virtues  of 
courage,  constancy,  fortitude,  faithfulness, 
daring,  and  self-restraint,  offers  an  exalted 
code  of  moral  principles,  not  only  for  the  man 
and  the  warrior,  but  for  men  and  women  in 
times  both  of  peace  and  of  war. 

This  is  the  ideal  with  which  Japan  emerges 
from  her  period  of  restraint,  of  obtenebration; 
this  is  the  spirit  which,  actuating  her  warriors, 
has  enabled  them  to  conquer.  Now  she  has 
reached  the  turning  point.  The  old  discipline, 


46        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

the  old  ascetic  order,  are  about  to  pass  away; 
the  stored  up  strength  is  bursting  forth.  And 
the  world  should  hope  that  the  flowering  time 
may  be  as  glorious  as  the  preparation  was 
severe. 


THE  RISEN  SUN. 


It  was  a  benign  Buddha  that  the  sweet  child 
Saint  whom  Japanese  art  loves  to  picture 
brought  back  with  him  across  the  sea  from 
China  a  thousand  years  ago,  a  Buddha  human 
and  loving,  a  creed  which  civilized  and  inspired. 
The  Blessed  One  pictured  in  Japanese  temples 
is  the  same  ascetic  figure  as  that  which  is  to  be 
found  in  Ceylon  and  China  and  Borneo,  but  the 
spirit  of  the  Japanese  Buddha  is  that  of  the 
young  Prince,  joyous  and  eager,  whom  the 
Englishmen  saw  imaged  in  the  Jo-Kang  of 
Lhasa. 

In  Japan  it  has  not  been  religion  which  has 
supplied  the  restraints  and  renunciations  that 
have  stored  up  the  energy  of  the  people;  this 
discipline  has  come  from  within  and  has  been 
built  up  out  of  custom  and  law  like  the  disci- 
pline of  the  early  Greeks.  And,  like  the  re- 
ligion of  the  Greeks,  the  religion  of  the  Japan- 
ese has  been  a  humanizing  influence.  The  arts 
followed  Buddhism  to  the  country.  There  was 
no  architecture,  no  art,  no  literature  in  Japan 
till  the  Buddhist  priest-craftsmen  built  their 


48        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA 

temples  and  adorned  them  with  statuary  and 
pictures  and  symbols  and  taught  the  people  to 
read  the  Chinese  classics.  Gentle  and  tender 
and  gracious  has  been  the  work  of  Buddhism  in 
Japan,  teaching  resignation  and  hope,  kindness 
to  all  living  things  and  pity  for  all  suffering, 
harmonizing  itself  naturally  and  perfectly  with 
the  ancient  belief  of  the  country,  educating  the 
people,  introducing  refinements  in  life  and  de- 
lightful customs  and  festivals,  and,  beyond  all, 
providing  the  impetus  that  inspired  the  Jap- 
anese to  evolve  an  art  and  a  literature  which 
are  by  this  time  perfect  media  for  the  expres- 
sion of  the  national  Genius. 

In  every  museum  of  the  West  one  may  now 
see  specimens  of  the  art  of  Japan  —  gray 
kakemono,  in  which  nebulous  tones  and  subtle 
curves  suggest  an  attenuation  of  beauty 
which  the  painters  of  the  West  have  never  at- 
tempted; Shippo  cloisonnes,  of  colors  so  bril- 
liant that  in  the  sunlight  they  glow  like  a  mil- 
lion gems ;  lacquers  of  design  so  faultless  that 
it  seems  as  if  the  addition  of  a  hairline  would 
mar  it;  old  Satsuma  pottery,  in  which  all  the 
poetry  of  lamp-lit  gardens  and  all  the  fascina- 
tion of  glittering  accoutrement  and  bizarre  cos- 
tume are  suggested  in  the  space  of  a  square 
inch ;  netsukes  and  sword-guards  of  a  fairy  deli- 
cacy; textiles  of  colors  so  splendid  and  so 
strange  that  the  Occident  has  no  words  to 
describe  them. 

Books  are  written  on  Japanese  art,  cata- 
logues of  artists  are  made,  experts  talk  of 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA        49 

styles  and  schools  and  masters.  And  with  it 
all  we  are  unable  to  understand.  We  see 
exquisitely  decorated  surfaces,  cunningly 
wrought  metal,  curious  patterns,  unusual  tints 
and  tones;  but  the  soul,  the  Genius,  behind  it 
all  is  hidden  from  us.  We  can,  as  has  been 
said,  only  apprehend  the  Genius  of  the  Greeks 
or  of  the  Italians  of  the  Renaissance,  yet  some 
message  there  is  for  us  in  the  marbles  of  Phei- 
dias,  the  Victory  of  Samothrace,  the  lunettes 
of  the  Delia  Robbia.  But  a  painting  by  Nobu- 
zane  or  a  statue  by  Tankei  is  meaningless  to  us. 
Beneath  the  bronze-tiled  roofs  of  Nikko,  beyond 
the  marvellous  inner  gates  which  guard  the 
tomb  of  lyeyasu,  in  the  Halls  of  Worship  with 
their  Buddhist  angels,  their  vermillion  pillars, 
their  golden  bells  and  great  stone  lanterns,  we 
are  impressed,  we  admire,  but  we  cannot  under- 
stand. It  is  all  the  expression  of  a  civilization 
that  is  alien  to  us. 

But  it  is  not  the  complete  expression,  in  the 
sense  in  which,  for  instance,  the  Elgin  marbles 
are  the  expression  of  the  Genius  of  Greece.  The 
art  of  the  Japanese  up  to  the  present  time  has 
been  the  manifestation  of  intense  natural  love 
for  beauty,  of  natural  refinement  and  impec- 
cable delicacy,  nature  subtilized,  rather  than  a 
conscious  effort  toward  expression.  This  re- 
finement, this  delicacy,  are  greater  perhaps 
than  any  other  people  in  all  the  world  has 
shown.  They  are  exhibited  by  the  Japanese  in 
a  hundred  ways  that  are  strange  to  us  —  in 
their  perfect  arrangement  of  flowers,  in  their 


SO        OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAM  A 

landscape  gardening,  their  decoration  of 
houses,  their  blossom  festivals,  their  tea  cere- 
monies, their  poetical  contests.  And  the  art 
of  the  Japanese  has  been,  so  far,  chiefly  the  ex- 
quisite arrangement  of  line  and  tone  and  color, 
without  the  power  of  intellectual  or  emotional 
excitation  possessed  by  the  best  works  of  the 
masters  of  the  West. 

There  never  has  been,  and  there  never  can  be, 
any  such  thing  as  translation;  but  so  far  as 
we  are  able  to  appreciate  the  literature  of  Japan 
we  find  the  same  qualities  in  it  as  in  Japanese 
art  —  refinement  carried  to  a  point  never 
reached  in  the  Occident,  workmanship  of  amaz- 
ing delicacy,  intense  feeling  for  natural  beauty 
—  together  with  a  deep  sense  of  tragedy  and  an 
all-pervading  enthusiasm  for  nobility  of  con- 
duct. It  would  seem  that  the  literature  of 
Japan  has  already  gone  further  as  an  expres- 
sion of  her  national  Genius  than  has  her  art. 

And  now?  All  the  signs  point  to  the  ap- 
proach of  the  great  flowering  time,  the  time 
when  the  self-realization  of  Japan  will  be  com- 
plete, when  her  Genius  will  find  clear  and  per- 
fect expression.  It  has  to  its  hand  instruments 
wonderfully  fashioned,  perhaps  more  nearly 
approaching  flawlessness  than  any  the  world 
has  previously  produced. 

The  world  waits  for  the  message  which  it 
will  bring.  When  that  message  comes  we 
shall  understand.  Those  enigmatic  figures, 
those  elusive  curves  and  subtle  colors  and  curi- 
ous harmonies,  that  self-abnegation  which 


OLYMPUS  AND  FUJI  YAMA        51 

sacrifices  the  individual  for  the  State,  that 
strange  code  of  honor  which  regards  life  so 
lightly  —  for  a  moment  the  world  will  under- 
stand. 

Japan  will  prevail.  It  may  be  by  conquest; 
it  will  surely  be  by  ideas.  She  has  youth,  and 
the  rest  of  the  world  is  old.  She  has  energy, 
and  the  Occident  is  weakened  and  ennuye. 
She  has  high  ideals,  and  the  people  of  the  West 
are  sunk  in  a  materialism  that  deadens  and  de- 
grades. They  have  trod  the  grapes,  they  have 
drunken  the  wine;  with  her  the  grapes  are  still 
to  tread,  the  wine  is  still  to  drink. 

And  other  civilizations  will  come,  other 
world  cataclysms,  other  epochal  wars.  State 
will  fight  against  state,  race  against  race,  and 
ever  the  strongest  will  win.  And  ever,  we  may 
hope,  something  of  good  will  last,  something  be 
gained. 


